


In the Works

by orchidbreezefc



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Mental Illness, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 12:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7844119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchidbreezefc/pseuds/orchidbreezefc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Chapter 5, Komaeda finds himself having visions and losing time. Hinata tries to take him aside and tell him to stop what he's doing, but the plan is already in motion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Works

**Author's Note:**

> Hey look, a gen fic with Hinata and Komaeda. You know, just two dudes who are really important to each other and drawn to each other like magnets and care a lot about each other's well-being and opinions of each other. Platonically.
> 
> I know I'm posting twice in two days, and I know it's still not J&J, but listen, I need validation. Please kudos+comment if you take the time to read.
> 
> I'm always shifty around last names and Japanese honorifics and half the time I just don't even bother with them for fear I'll get them wrong. But listen. Hinata-kun, though. So shout out to Helen for educating me a bit about their use, and for being my awesome SDR2 friend as always.
> 
> Warning for self-harm (the canon kind) and lots of trappings of mental illness.

Nagito has been seeing things lately.

Hallucinations are a symptom of dementia, of course, and his brain has done worse, certainly. He’s used to shadow-people; his empathy certainly is nothing to write home about; his actions are inappropriate, his hygiene is beyond the compulsive, he has muscle spasms, the whole spectrum.

But now he’s seeing things. _Really_ seeing things. Entire visions. Something about a girl—a young woman—a girl—with red nails and a smile like a knife. Something about a young man with an empty yet dangerous red stare, which somehow makes him feel as though something has been lost, something that he knew at one point—not in the right lifetime, maybe, but still something he intimately knew. Something about a burning and desolate landscape that has become home, or if nothing else, something he is used to. Something about hands, and hate, and despair--

When the flashes are over, Nagito wakes up not knowing where he is, his head held pressed between his hands, trembling. When he finds his classmates, they suspiciously ask where he’s been, but he has no answer for them, so he glosses it over. And of course isn’t that just like Komaeda, crazy Komaeda, can’t or won’t answer a simple question, can’t or won’t keep the trail of a simple conversation long enough to keep from ranting about hope.

His hands shake all the time now. He feels a sense of urgency, a knowledge that time is running out. Too late, too late—or it will be, if he doesn’t do something, and fast. Maybe, if he could make everyone else understand how dire the situation is, maybe then the screaming in his head would stop.

Maybe, if he did something as desperate as he feels, they would see. They’ve never understood, but maybe they would, if he could just show them. But no—that’s the disorganized thought talking, the disorganized timeline. He’s not thinking in the right time. It doesn’t matter that they understand him, even if somewhere in his chest he yearns for that, still yearns for even that worm to understand— _especially_ him--

It doesn't matter. He needs to find the traitor. He needs to plan.

\--

The last time he gets a chance—is forced to—the last time he talks to Hinata, one-on-one, they’re on different sides, both figuratively and literally; standing apart from each other on the docks outside their cottages. Directly opposed; not something likely to change in the remainder of their time, of course.

“Are you planning something shady?” Hinata asks guardedly, his arms crossed. He’s so unaware of what a broken record he is sometimes. “Are you going to be the murderer, finally?”

Nagito has bigger things on his mind. “We are all going to die, Hinata-kun,” he muses. “Some of us sooner than others.”

Hinata bristles. “That’s—! That's fucking creepy to say, Komaeda. Don’t fucking say shit like that.”  
Nagito smiles wistfully. Hinata’s never understood. Not that he’ll ever get the chance, anyway. “Good night, Hinata-kun.”

Hinata looks surprised, but he is, as ever, Hinata: he doesn’t spit something like 'psycho' or ‘freak’ at him, or even say it under his breath. Even in suspicion, he’s never cruel. Under other circumstances, in an earlier time ( _in a different life_ ) Nagito would have been unspeakably thankful for it. Now, it’s hard to think of it as anything but repulsively weak.

“Good night, Komaeda,” Hinata says at last. “But I really mean it. Don’t do anything sketchy, okay?” When Nagito merely hums noncommittally, he’s surprised to be grabbed by the arm.

“ _Komaeda,_ ” says Hinata. Nagito blinks back, eyes wide. “I know you now, you know. I don’t understand you, really, but I—I can tell—something’s going on. You’re planning something, or you’re—you’re going to do something stupid and we’re all going to pay for it.” He shakes Nagito's arm. “And I know you don’t care, but you’re going to pay for it too, I can just tell. Just—be safe, okay? I don’t want to lose you to something stupid—or at all, I guess…"

As he trails off, Nagito remembers himself, finally finds the strength to try to wrench himself away, the tongue to say, “Don’t touch me, you worthless trash—“

But then Hinata’s eyelids lower and his grip tightens and he’s staring into Nagito’s very soul, he can’t escape, those eyes are so hypnotic and fading deep red—

Nagito wakes up in his room, panting, clutching a gas mask in one hand and his head in the other. What? The plan. Right. He’s got to stick to the plan. It’s just—

Was that a memory? Had Hinata really been concerned, really said something, or had his awful diseased brain constructed something that he wants—used to want—

He’s only halfway there, he thinks, staring at the fire grenades, their contents already emptied carelessly into the shower drain. He’s not too far in to listen and turn around. His head buzzes with compulsion, with need, with the all-consuming urge to wipe out despair, but even so, killing them all is… drastic.

Maybe the evil in all of them could be—cured? Can he be sure it was there at all, even with what the files said? He _knows_ these people, after all: callous, maybe, even casually cruel, some of them… certainly none of them fond of Nagito in any sense, but evil?

And—he doesn’t want to think about him, but he can’t help it—does Hinata deserve to die? A talentless nothing, sucked into a cesspool of despair by his desperation to be special; something he really never achieved, not in this life. A boy who does his best to be kind, or at least not unnecessarily cruel, or at least more tolerant of Nagito than the others are, more tolerant than he knows he deserves.

Nagito holds his head again, as red eyes and nails rend his sight into crimson slashes. The visions are getting more vivid. He is lost in stretches of wasteland, a distance containing nothing at all, only brokenness, only misery, all of it ordinary and boring in its own way. 

Surely this is the place with the most potential for hope, and surely that is what he wanted. What does he care if everything else should fall apart, as long as he gets to see that? What should he care?

Buildings fall. Fires rage. Innocent people are cut down. He feels nothing. Certainly not hope. The last thing he knows is a sense that, even if it is all for the sake of hope, he can't let it happen _her_ way--

Nagito tries to sit up and hold his head, but he can't. One hand is tied down. Right. The plan.

It wasn’t hope that he saw, the pressure of that world bearing down on his shoulders as it comes closer and closer into reality. His mouth forms a hard line. Making the best of it, searching for hope in the wasteland, ignoring the blossoming evil in his classmates; he was kidding himself. It's a joke, a lie. Everything is all still going according to the wrong plan, the plan to stamp hope out--and all he can do is be a wrench in the works.

He thinks, as he brings the knife down on his thighs ( _brings the knife down on his wrist_ ), a wrench in the works might be the most hopeful thing he's ever been.


End file.
